Which Skills Should Businesses Be Focussing On Upskilling Their Teams In?

Transcript

Lachy Gray  00:07

The Make It Work theme for 2023 is upskilling. And in today's episode, we dive into upskilling, what it is and what particular skills were referring to. We'll also chat through the skills that are in demand right now, and are expected to be in demand this decade. So Karen, what is upskilling?

Karen Kirton  00:36

Yeah, good question. Because I actually had someone say to me the other day, they'd never heard the term before. But they liked it. And I thought, Oh, I hadn't actually thought that that was something dating, defining. But I guess it has changed over time to what used to be training and then growth and development. And now people using this type of upskilling. And as you know, I love a definition. So I went to the dictionary. And it said that it's the action or the process of teaching an employee additional skills. Oh, that's interesting, actually has an employee lens in the definition, which I hadn't realised. And then I did some some more research, and I found a BBC article. And it said in that, that the ultimate goal of upskilling is to be a more effective worker, stay relevant and competitive in your industry. And therefore you get noticed for more raises and recognition, and you position yourself better for job opportunities down the road. So I thought that was really interesting that it's best seen from that employee lens in that way. And in episode one, we talked about that world economic forum future of jobs report that 50% of employees will need re skilling by 2025. And 40% of current workers care skills are expected to change in the next five years. And I thought, well, we can't just keep using the same statistics every episode, can we. So some LinkedIn data shows that skill sets for jobs have changed by 25%, since 2015. And they are saying that by 2027, they expect that number to double. So that's quite a lot, you know, 50% of skills changing by 2027. And McKinsey data had 17 million US workers will see their jobs be less in demand over the next decade. And they're saying that 80% of those people will need to rescale rescale completely, and not just upskill. So there's clearly an imperative as an individual to do this. But I think also as a business, if we're upskilling our employees, it's going to help us to retain them for longer, we're going to be able to attract people into our business, it's a really good thing, particularly for smaller businesses, if you can say that you're upskilling people because you understand the imperatives around the future of work that's quite attractive. And you know, those things also go into the longevity of your business don't use so yeah, there was a Deloitte article as well, that will also share with the podcast notes and, and it'll be music to your ears lucky organisations with a strong learning culture a 92%, more likely to develop novel products and processes 52% more productive 56% more likely to be first to market and 17% more profitable. So it's a really compelling message there. And from my perspective, also, their engagement retention rates are 30 to 50%. Higher. So very long answer to your question of what is upskilling. But I think there are two components, I think there's an individual imperative about how I make myself stay valuable as an employee. And then there's the business one of how do we actually keep our businesses relevant?

Lachy Gray  03:59

Yeah, some, some very compelling statistics there. And I think it's probably fair to say that a healthy culture is a learning culture. You know, if I think about what that means, if you've got people who are curious, they're open minded. They're willing to make mistakes, and they feel safe to do that. Making mistakes is a critical part of learning. That's how we learn giving each other feedback. I think that alone, yes. It's it's a learning curve, you're going to learn better collectively, and collectively level are you going to be more productive, just almost as a byproduct of that, I think. But also, I would suggest you get to enjoy work more. Yeah. Because that's, that's a that's a great culture to be a part of where you feel supported and you're trying new things. And that speed of change really stands out to me especially from the McKinsey data. And I guess one thing that comes to mind for me is we're also guessing out b, because we do have no idea what these skills and jobs are going to look like. Because we mean how fast they changed for years. So, I think that's interesting, because, because traditionally, skills were categorised as hard and soft, which is a bit random when you think about it, terms of the labels, but hard skills were technical skills, such as accounting or programming, carpentry, even HR, then soft skills, which is a really terrible label, I think what they are human skills. That's how we communicate and cooperate at work. And they're transferable between roles and industries as well. So things like communication and problem solving, and resilience and adaptability, you know, a lot of the skills that we kind of had to lean on during the past few years of the, of the pandemic. And I was thinking, why, why are we hearing this term upskilling more often now, I mean, it's always, it's always been a thing, right? We're always learning new, new skills. But I think to your point, the speed of change in the job market is increasing. And that means that what's required in a particular role is changing. And also, I think the entire job lifecycle is speeding up. So new jobs are being created. And some jobs are no longer necessary. And that probably, that lifecycle is probably going a lot faster than it did in the past. And then we've got automation, that's becoming more common. And that's forces us to rethink where human time It sounds funny to say that, but the human time versus machine time is best spent. There's a lot of talk about, well, the downsides of automation and artificial intelligence is going to take our jobs and yeah, that is that is true in in part, but also then the follow up question is, well, where is the human time best spent? You know, so also, you I think competition and customer expectations are increasing because cost to enter a new market, or launch a new product are decreasing due to automation, AI, rise of digital literacy, especially in these generations coming through now. You can get a new website up and running in minutes. And back in the 2000s. When I helped build websites for corporate customers, we charge a minimum of 30 grand for a website, we call it a brochure website did nothing fancy. And now you can probably get up and running for a couple 100 bucks.

Karen Kirton  07:52

Yeah, easily.

Lachy Gray  07:54

So if most organisations and the people who work for them have access to the same tools, so automation, AI and so on, then we've got to find ways to differentiate our products, our businesses, and I guess ourselves. So one way to do that is to zero in on the customer's needs and provide customer service, superior customer service. And these require soft skills. And Deloitte Access Economics, forecasts that soft skill intensive occupations will account for two thirds of all jobs by 2030. So soft, skill intensive occupations are things like managers, professionals, engineers, it community personnel, workers, office manager, sales rep, so largely knowledge workers as a generalisation. So that's a big change. Again, I'd be to guess, but still, why? Why this focus on upskilling and soft skills occupations into the future, do you think?

Karen Kirton  08:59

Yeah, I think that rate of automation is a key component, because it is much faster than anticipated. And, you know, you read that statistic we mentioned in episode one, you know, 67% of jobs were done by humans in 2020. That's predicted to be 53%. In 2025. When that was predicted, you know, the, there were things in 2020 That didn't exist that exists now. So is that percentage going to be in the lesson? Yeah, no, everyone says, oh, you know, the robots are taking over well, that they're not. It's just it's changing the roles that we do. And the other week, our NBN went down at home. And that really hit me in how the way that we live in work is so entwined with tech. There was nothing in my house that was working, you know. We use our phone to turn everything off and on me. And my kids were just like, we don't know what to do, like, why doesn't. So, and I think that, that was a really, you know, key moment for me to reflect on because I thought, yeah, I'm talking all the time about tech and how it's changing the workplace. But it's actually changing our personal lives much more than I think we've realised within our house and our cars, and how much we rely on, you know, forms of AI that we may not think about. So, you know, series, a perfect example. You know, my kids don't search stuff on a website, they ask Siri for everything. And that's because they've grown up that way. And so you can see that continuing, you know, obviously, they'll still be jobs, that won't be completely automated. But even within those jobs, you can't get away with not having those human skills, because we expect more these days from our workplace. You know, we're we're not in that first Industrial Revolution, we're not working to rule with hierarchy and micromanagement, people won't accept that anymore. You know, we want to be valued and understood, we want to be treated as human beings, and also our societal expectations have changed. And, you know, we want our colleagues to respect us and to not harass us or bully us. You know, and all of that means that we need higher levels of EQ, including empathy. And, you know, we've seen legislation following those societal obligations. So then business owners become vicariously liable for the acts of their employees, which also gives the onus on the business owners to upskill the employees and human skills. So, you know, I think that Tech has a lot to do with it. But also, I think those societal expectations have shifted so much. And if you're not sure what I mean, just go and watch any movie from the 1990s. And you will start cringing and then you will understand how much we've changed in actually a pretty short amount of time.

Lachy Gray  12:06

So true. When you told me about the NBN, dropping out, I was thinking about my reliance on my phone. My password management tool on there. Yes. I use Apple Pay. It's how I communicate. So and it's actually I mean, you calling a phone, a phone is probably a misnomer, isn't it? It's not a phone, it's

Karen Kirton  12:29

you don't use it as a phone.

Lachy Gray  12:31

The least the one I use? No one calls anymore. So messaging. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's a real, that's a single point of failure. You lose your phone.

Karen Kirton  12:42

Oh, yeah. I do think about that quite often. I need to not jinx myself. But yeah, because our lives are now in our phone. Like, I don't carry a wallet with me my driver's licence, Medicare card, or everything's just in my phone. So yeah, it is. It's probably not a good idea to have it that way. But it's the convenience factor, which is why we all do it, isn't it?

Lachy Gray  13:05

Yeah, absolutely. I do think it's interesting. Thinking about, well, you know, where where is human time were spent. Because there are a lot of repetitive job tasks that will be automated. So probably bookkeeping, and maybe proofreading social media content, drafting, image editing lots more. And but then it's more so about, well, where is the human time Miss spin in that process might not replace it completely. And I think Microsoft, Microsoft's approach with GitHub, which is a code repository tool is interesting. They talk about it as a, the AI they've introduced into it as a co pilot for developers today, saying, eventually, it might do a 60 or 80% of the code. But the developer is still reviewing it and making sure that it's accurate, because as we know, these things aren't always accurate at the moment. But there are also lots of non repetitive tasks. They're ambiguous, by definition, they're gonna change. So they require skills like critical thinking, emotional judgement, empathy, like you said, because people are going to have to cooperate in this ambiguous and uncertain environment. And so you need a certain level of foundational level and the skills I think, to be able to do that. And then you add on top remote and hybrid work, again, puts even more pressure on communication and time management. If I think about some of our learnings from going fully remote almost three years ago now it One of them is the change in how we need to communicate. And that context can become a casualty of remote work, because you have far less inputs and signals. So when you walk into an office, you immediately pick up on all these nonverbal things. What's on the walls? How its laid out? Are there plants in there? How do people talk to each other? Do they sit near each other? Do they go for breaks at the same time? You have none of that? When you're working remote? So from the employers perspective, how do you communicate a culture when it's not physical? And from the employees perspective? How do you get a sense of it? Yeah, if you can't see it, and touch it, and hear it. So that has put a lot of emphasis for me on Yeah, our communication, our feedback, working through challenging situations, which are inevitable, because they're a consequence of this way that we're working at the moment. So I was having a look at what the in demand skills are between 23. LinkedIn learning has a list of 10. So they're things like, quite broad management, communication, customer service, and leadership, and so on. And was fibre soft and fibre hard. So based on that list, there seems to be a real mix. And what's your take on that?

Karen Kirton  16:42

Yeah, I question it. Because I think that LinkedIn, their data comes off job ads, it comes off, you know, the skills that people are putting into their profiles, it comes off the training that people are going into in the LinkedIn platform. And all those things are connected, because when people are putting their skills on their profile, it's usually because they're looking for a job. If they're going into the LinkedIn learning platform, that's, again, usually will say, Oh, I need to do this other things to get this job even. You know, I know that LinkedIn will send me job ads that say, Hey, you've got this many of the skills needed for that job ad. But the reason I question that is because we know from the last episode, we were talking to pre that, you know, we're still mostly hiring and advertising for experience, which is more of those hard skills, and not necessarily for behaviours, like the soft skills. So So let me put it this way to you. Like if I said to you, I have a great candidate. They have experience in sales, project management, research, analytical, and marketing skills. So all those hard ones, but they can't work in a team, they can't talk to customers, and they can't lead or manage other people, which is the soft ones on that list. Are you going to hire them? No. Yeah. So let's turn this around. They can work in a team that can talk to customers, they can lead and they can manage, but they have absolutely no experience in sales, project management, research, analytical marketing, would you consider hiring them?

Lachy Gray  18:14

I would.

Karen Kirton  18:17

So I think that's what's so interesting about this, to me is that we keep going to market and we keep thinking that we need to put ourselves out to market with these hard skills. But actually, I think most business owners are going to put more of an onus on those soft skills, those human skills, if possible, because hard skills can be taught they can be taught much faster than soft skills and the vast majority of cases, which is why we just intuitively know that the marketing project manager who can't talk to people is going to be a bull in a china shop, you know, they're gonna leave flames and destruction. And so then we think, Okay, well is that person, right for our business, versus someone else that doesn't have that same level of experience, but can demonstrate those softer those human skills and we go, well, we'll just train them up in a little bit more project management and marketing, won't we, which means that they go into that LinkedIn platform to do the high school training and LinkedIn says, Hey. So yeah, I don't know. I think that when I look at experience of business owners and leaders, and we've all had these when we've hired for people based purely on experience versus hiring people that have those soft human skills. We know that the person that doesn't have those skills, but has the experience is not going to be the better hire so so yeah, I think that it's a bit of a mindset shift and maybe just question reflect ourselves on more how are we actually hiring and what do we value in our business for promotions as well? And how do we actually upskill? Because that's obviously the focus of this episode, our employees and the skills that are needed, and they can be those those tougher ones, those soft ones.

Lachy Gray  20:17

That's interesting. So in your experience in job descriptions, will you see soft skills listed out with hard skills?

Karen Kirton  20:29

Ah, look, I think people give them a little bit of lip service at the back end of a job description, I think the challenge is that there's a bit of an expectation that our people just have that they'll be able to communicate, they'll be able to collaborate. But we know that that's not true. And context matters, like someone might be able to communicate and collaborate on a football field, but not in our office environment, you know, so it doesn't mean they can't, but maybe they just haven't had the opportunity before and haven't actually learned that different style of communication and collaboration. So I think that as the tech gets better and more accessible, and then business owners and leaders are going to be able to use some form of platform to do testing of candidates around those behaviours, those soft skills, so maybe they have a, you know, a level or a line in the sense that, okay, this level of experience is kind of like the basis of what we need for that job. So I need a developer, for example, I need someone that knows at least what they're doing. And as long as they've got that, you know, small level of experience or hard skill there, then I want to only shortlist the candidates that have the potential to be higher in these other skills. And you know, and I think that that takes tick, because just having a chat to someone, I know lots of people still do that. But just having a chat with someone in a coffee shop is not going to be enough to tell you whether they have those skills or not.

Lachy Gray  22:06

Yeah, I think I think and this is the crux of the challenge to be solved. And so it will be because I think that soft skills, we think of them in at a higher level. So we say, We want someone with excellent communication. What does that mean? What does that look like? What behaviours, and today are a performing and you could have two excellent communicators that might do things slightly differently. And I think that is the challenge that we're facing. And we touched on this in episode one, when we were talking about these skills databases, like, how do you actually codify I don't love that word, but codify the skills to try to map them to get an understanding of these of groupings, because if I think about someone that is an excellent communicator, they're probably an excellent listener. They ask really good questions. They're open minded. So they're willing to listen to a, an opposing point of view and find out more and give equal space to the other person. They're curious. There's a whole bunch of things like that. And I wonder, wow, that's one really important soft skill. But then you say soft skills like adaptability, adaptability, resilience? And if he, how, how? What does that look like? Yeah, and it sounds like how do you actually measure it? Yeah, the tech might, might be able to help. But again, it's still I think it's, it's almost heading back towards the hard skill sort of process, which is it becomes more black and white. And that's perhaps why hard skills are more defined, because you can say, here's what you need to know. It's more almost factual or procedural. Yeah. Yeah, by definition, they're not either. Yeah. So and then, in addition to hard and soft skills, there are emerging skills. So these are skills that are new to particular occupations and, and are growing. So according to the National Skills commission, so there is a National Skills Commission, which I've discovered the fastest growing emerging skills, perhaps not surprisingly, data and digital skills, such as software orchestration, automation, AI data analysis, and that is based on the number of job listings that request them so you might have an issue with this current. But the rate of change for some of these emerging skills is out aeronautical. So from 2013 to 2020, demand for AI Rose 4,400%. Yep. It automation 3,800%. I mean, they're huge numbers here.

Karen Kirton  25:17

Yeah, they are. And you know, and I think that's because we are in that next big leap of tech, right now with AI. So, yeah, that makes sense. And I think the last big leap we had was really that.com, boom, you know, back in the grand old, early 2000s, late 90s. And, but I don't think I'm not saying that I think we need to dismiss it. Like, I do think there's an imperative for every business, no matter what kind of business to look at this tech and determine what AI or automation can bring to them in terms of their products and services to keep them competitive into the future, which obviously also then means upskilling employees, and I think that, therefore goes into those job ads, perhaps because people don't really know, or how do I upskill my employees effectively, I need to buy in people with those skills. But the reality is, that may not be that many people out there with those skills right now. So I think it's worth reflecting on and saying, Okay, well, how do we actually grow this internally? Because it's not going away? You know, it's like, yeah, when the internet first started, or social media first became like, the, you know, this is just going to be part of our lives, it already is a part of our lives that we probably haven't realised, as I was talking about my NBN went down. So I think that no matter what kind of business you have, there's an opportunity there to say, Okay, what, what's going to change my business and my industry? And what do I need to start thinking about now?

Lachy Gray  26:44

Absolutely, yeah. And we've focused in this episode on some understanding upskilling and dived into hard and soft and emerging skills. Next episode, we're actually going to interview someone with experience in upskilling, within an organisation, which I'm really looking forward to, so we'll get to that in a sec. But just to wrap up, I think for me, big takeaway is the opportunity to articulate which soft skills we value, you know, as an organisation, and then the discuss what do they look like, day to day in our organisation? How do we know if someone is performing those soft skills? If there is a gap? How could we train it? I think that's gonna be really interesting. But you can.

Karen Kirton  27:32

Yeah, I think that I hope that people are putting upskilling learning and development, whatever you want to call it on the business agenda is actually a strategic imperative, because the businesses and the industries are changing at such a pace that that your business is not going to survive in the long term, if you're not considering how do we actually keep our people developing and upskilling and changing to to meet that demand. Because no matter what kind of business you're in, you're still in the business of people, whether you're making widgets, or you're a plumber, or you know, you're an IT company. It's the people that you're getting in that actually going to be able to make your business survive and thrive. So, so I hope that you know, it's not seen as just a budget item to get cut, when the revenues down, and that it is starting to take more seriously as we see these huge changes out there.

Lachy Gray  28:33

Well, links to articles, and anything else we've discussed will be over on our websites jano.com that are you and amplify hr.com. Today, you just follow the links to the podcast section. And if you've received value from this episode, we would love it if you could leave a rating or review at Apple podcasts.

Karen Kirton  28:52

And as you mentioned, coming up in the next episode, we're talking with a learning and development leader, Chris Tan from Winning Academy. And you may have heard of the winning group. I hear them on the radio, you know, they own appliances, online, winnings and Rogers. Hello. And Chris is responsible for upscaling the team at Winning Group via that winning Academy.

Lachy Gray  29:11

Yeah, that podcast episode is coming up in two weeks from now. So click the subscribe button to be notified of when it's available. Any final thoughts, Karen?

Karen Kirton  29:22

I think for me, I thought I probably need to actually make my own learning and development plan. And that's something that we often forget to do is look at ourselves. So that's on my to do list.

Lachy Gray  29:35

Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time on the Make It Work podcast.